


the dichotomy between thinking and feeling

by InaccessibleRail



Series: under my cypresses [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Pining, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 16:24:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2588234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InaccessibleRail/pseuds/InaccessibleRail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It feels a bit like reaching out to him; my steps falter at the sound of his voice. I listen in on his conversations so I’ll know where he’ll be. On the other end, the redhead tells him to meet her.</p><p>And I wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the dichotomy between thinking and feeling

I'm focused. It’s a slippery grip. There's smoke smell - sour, chemical - lingering in my clothes. The old items rub off on the new. Maybe I've kept this sweatshirt for longer than I should've, but nights have gotten cold. I put it all in a pile. I go from the bottom upward: shoes off, socks, pants- next procedure.

Bottom, up. Feet first—head last. Concentrate.

I'm in an empty lavatory washing in a sink. Was a while now since I shaved; the scruff itches but there are no razors here. I want to cut my hair. Want a knife but knives are distracting.

The soap smells only of soap and this has something to do with a song sung under one's (his) breath.

I'm scrubbing and I'm focusing on the sting instead of the itch. The washroom is white and I scrub and I scrub and my mind is white. I focus on his singing even though it's washed out by the white and choked by my will to hold it.

It'll be light soon and he'll be out. He doesn't dawdle, he's got his errands. Any day now and he'll be off again: to find me. If he hides in my uncast shadow, waits for the light to switch on, maybe he will. (Waits for an end at the start of the circle.)

I'm back in D.C.. This is not without necessity even as I'm exposed here and on unsteady footing; self-aware enough to know that much, although I drift in and out.

More and more.

I think.

I almost wholly thought the last time I saw him would be the _last_. I've gone to places I know he wouldn't know. I've kept my fires quiet and contained so that he wouldn't pick up the scent. I still smell of smoke and I don't know if it was worth the trouble. If in its circular path, it just led me back.

Lost my knife too.

The dispenser is out of soap. I take it as an natural end and I stop. I don’t remember the song now, only some of the shapes it made in my head. It’s to do with light. Something shines mutely.

I'm back in D.C.. It didn't take me long at all.

 

I try to move with purpose even though I’ve nowhere to be. I try not to look out of place. I try not to look cold.

I didn’t have to come back. Not now. Even as I am here, I don’t have to cross paths with him. Not ever. Something in me takes offense at these seemingly immutable facts.

The streets are slowly coming alive. Too early still for brisk walking and conversation, but it’s rolling in. A woman up ahead is putting her phone away.

Our trajectories converge. (I figure it’s as good a time as any.)

My hand is in her pocket. Her phone is in my hand. We walk on in our opposing directions.

No, I don't have to. But at this point my pattern is too predictable for me to pretend otherwise. I never let him go far. I have an unreasonable urge to watch (over) him, proved expedient by his habitual fuck ups, enhanced or not. 

The more I think of him, the more fragile he becomes.

It feels a bit like reaching out to him; my steps falter at the sound of his voice. I listen in on his conversations so I’ll know where he’ll be. On the other end, the redhead tells him to meet her.

And I wait.

I'm focusing on formulating a thought (feeling); I'm trying to remember my original purpose. I know it's useless because I can never make myself remember. It becomes speculation, rationalization. Putting one thought after another when I can barely put one foot in front of the other makes my fists curl, but I can pick up some of the fragments - the inconspicuous, matt ones - and turn them over and over. I loosen my grip on my hands, my head.

Like this: buying him chocolate. Not for his birthday or anything.

Out of the blue.

A murder of crows take off, (it’s something about a bird in a tree. Something shines.) I can see the sun now, over the treetops and between buildings; I’m winding my way south. Makes me miss the sea, inexplicably.

 

It takes me longer than it ought to to spot her. She materializes on the bleachers overlooking third base. On the field, practice is dragging on. She sits alone, keeping busy with her phone like most of the sideliners and some of the team. Even in her utter uninterest she looks like she belongs there.

I’m hesitating, balancing on the curb before crossing the street. Because now I see him, now he’s here. I’m at the chain link fence; I’m directly in his line of sight, his body turned toward me. Fifty yards between us and he stops. I can’t see much of his face in the shade of his cap.

It’s not until he turns away that I realize I’ve been holding my breath. 

My heart stutters as I unlace my fingers from the mesh and take off, rendering this entire expedition moot—but I have to go.

It doesn’t return in long stretches, more like a pulsation and that’s it. Compacted, nonlinear—pieces superimposed on each other. I can try to extend them like folded paper, find an order for the emotions to go in, but it’s only speculation.

The bat hits the ball with a smack. I hear his sharp inhale amidst the cheers. (No, I don’t.) I wrap my arm around my waist to hold myself together, until my pulse evens out.

I hurry back but by a different route. I have to get away.

I walk through an outdoor market and the smells and colors are cloying. In the cover of stands and crates and bodies I feel somewhat sheltered. I go past the food and the flowers and the knickknacks, I slow and let my fingers brush against them like I see others do: a show of normalcy. My gaze slides off everything, taking no note.

Still shaking a bit.

It's the second to last stall, the edge of the boxes and the waxy peels fall away under my fingertips. I focus on the sensation. Focus on the forward motion.

There’s a fruit that I can’t recall the name of, not quite the size of a baseball, in my pocket when I leave. I know the color. It’s purple and soft, like bruised skin.

 

Temperature is dropping: daylight is a short-lived reprieve. Shorter and shorter.

I should keep moving but I’m drained. I’ve reached the intersection so I go for the fountain and slump on a bench instead. Try not to wonder if he’s close, (and just like that, I've failed.) I like the sound the water makes as it falls and hits the pool. Makes me think of nothing. Lobbies in expensive hotels maybe, fleetingly. Running a bath. Mountain ranges.

I'm in an open space so I don't quite relax but something gives, something very small. Could sit here and continue starving, continue freezing. Why not?

I think I'm wasting - dry rot in my brain - and there's no one else for me to need but him. And beyond that I need an aim because what is the point of keeping alive?

What the hell is the point if there's no point to me?

I’m clenching my fists. I let go and reach into my pocket, take out the fruit.Take a bite, feel the skin split under my teeth, (wish I had a knife.)

This one comes like a soft current from weeks and weeks of turning it over; weaves together and aligns quietly in the very center of me, sinks, becomes a knot in my stomach—and I still don’t understand. I look down at the fruit in my hands, that I don’t know the name of, almost jarringly sweet, and think about buying him chocolate when there was a nickel to spare. Only a handful of times, no special occasion.

It required a certain amount of composure to present him with it. (Tossing it at his head, leaving it on the square and rickety table, hiding it in the top drawer which was only for his things.) A steady furtherance of stealth. Didn't steal, for fear that he'd know, yet there was this knot in my stomach. I gave it to him and said I'd already had my piece.

Like handing over my beating heart, dripping wet and giving the game away. Wishing so hard, God willing, that he wouldn't call me out. Tell me to stop.

You shouldn’t, he said, numerous meanings attached that I can’t quite grasp. Frowning at the plain chocolate bar in his hands. (I hear him say it: _you shouldn’t_ —and maybe it’s a fabrication from the present but it fits.)

I shouldn’t so many things, but he let me get away with the lie and the rest. Never told me to stop. Told me: come here.

Watching him eat was better than eating it myself. (Chocolate melting in his mouth, pleasure melting in my chest.) He’d only ever have half.

If I close my eyes and think about his closed eyes, I think I can catch a glimpse of how it unfurls.

The knot in my stomach.

I open my eyes and it’s gone dark. My breath fogs in the lamplight.

 

Can’t really account for how I got in here, but it doesn't startle me.

Maybe it's that I can’t face him in daylight, maybe I find it safer being another silhouette in his bedroom. He might wake up and kill me on instinct and I’d haunt this room in earnest.

I watch him with oblique thoughts. This is the point of crisis, I suppose. I don’t want to think about what I need, it only upsets me. I rationalize instead.

Here I am, by a nonlinear path. I’ve been here before.

I don’t extend this moment like folded paper, I can't make sense of this. He’s the start of that aching, soft current in me. He’s my origin, (my mission?) What more reason is there? I could let him be my end. I could let him end me. I could.

I think I could.

I can't tell what wakes him but he sits up and looks at me. Sees me. I’m not shaking any longer.

He’s asking if I’m hurt so I turn my head no.

I move with purpose. I crawl into his bed, boots and all, I settle next to him. He asks me, somewhere between a serious question and a stupid joke, if I’m going to kill him.

Lie down and go to sleep, I say, and so he lies down. I nudge him to roll onto his side and he does that too without so much as a skeptical glance my way; and I’m very close to him. He keeps very still. I put my arm around him like I know I used to.

I'm only a few steps closer and already I’m teetering on the edge of undoing. A slippery grip.

The smell of him hits me - _smack!_ bat to a baseball - and I try not to curl in on myself from how I'm suddenly burning, constricting. He smells like himself. It's hard to distinguish euphoria from pain.

He says, sounding wide awake: I looked for you.

I don’t say anything.

I’m watching the light from the window. My mind is dark and the melody is completely lost on me now. But there was something about a lark and the mountain and the moon through oak leaves.

He wants to talk. The air vibrates with this want. (The leaves on the oak tree rattle.)

He doesn’t say anything.

In the window the moon shines on, and I pretend we’re asleep someplace else. He catches my hand and presses it to his chest, like I know he used to. I feel his heart beat. I wonder if that's the point.

**Author's Note:**

> If the spirit of Nietzsche happens to be reading this: I take stuff out of context. I steal. It's what I do: so ghost-sue me. I ain't scared.
> 
>  ~~The title makes even less sense since I cut so much out. (Nothing I write makes sense.)~~ ~~(I should buy some new dreams.)~~
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _“You know these things as thoughts, but your thoughts are not your experiences, they are an echo and after-effect of your experiences: as when your room trembles when a carriage goes past. I however am sitting in the carriage, and often I am the carriage itself._  
>  _In a man who thinks like this, the dichotomy between thinking and feeling, intellect and passion, has really disappeared. He feels his thoughts. He can fall in love with an idea. An idea can make him ill.”_


End file.
